The lavish Diamond Club at the Emirates Stadium, where season tickets cost £25,000, is an incongruous venue in which to extol the virtues of prudence in football finance. Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood believes that his club can succeed without having to sell the family jewels to the mega-rich.

He is adamant that his club will resist the current trend for overseas benefactors. They have no intention of presenting board member Stan Kroenke, worth an estimated $2bn (£1.1bn), with a begging bowl, nor do they welcome any extra involvement from their oligarch shareholder Alisher Usmanov, whose wealth exceeds $5bn (£2.7bn).

'If you are expecting some sort of sugar daddy to top up the coffers every time you overspend, that leads you into having a business that is unsustainable. I don't think that would be our way of doing things at all,' Hill-Wood says. 'The guy could easily get bored or decide to buy another yacht or go into horse racing. It makes you pretty slack in how you run the business and it deludes everybody.'

Such sentiment is the polar opposite of the noises currently coming from Manchester's nouveau riche, who boast the kind of deep pockets Hill-Wood accepts has changed the modern game.

'Regarding Manchester City and the Arabs buying it, we obviously can't compete with the money they are spending so there is no point trying,' he admits. 'We've got to succeed some other way. We bore people silly saying we've got to have a business plan that is sustainable. We want the club to be thriving in 50 years' time, not just this year.' Tellingly, the club generate two-thirds more income at the Emirates than they did at Highbury.

He insists Arsenal are on a sound enough financial footing to swat aside any unwelcome bids for players, with Cesc Fábregas being the obvious target. 'I don't think for us to sell our best players for any figure makes commercial sense,' Hill-Wood explains. 'If someone paid us £100million, you pay 40 per cent tax on the damn thing and what the hell are we going to do with the extra £60million? I'd rather have a couple of good players. We will resist any overtures made for our star players.'

In order to do so, Arsenal clearly have to pay competitive wages. Last week's financial results put the club's salary costs at more than £100m. That figure includes improved contracts for the young players they need to keep happy and a new deal for Arsène Wenger. Surprisingly, that total is similar to the wage bill at Manchester United. 'Wages are a continual problem,' Hill-Wood concedes. 'There is a story that we don't pay as much as a lot of other people. If you look at the figures, that isn't quite true.

'Chelsea have a bigger wage bill than us, but Manchester United and us are on a par. We don't like to go completely potty, but we are not mean either.'

United have two sizeable trophies to show for their outlay, but Hill-Wood is not convinced the champions are in the best financial shape. 'They have bigger debt repayments than we have and pay a pretty hefty interest rate, which we don't,' he argues. 'I am sure the Glazers are not in a position to pump a lot more money into United. Anyway, they have taken it out rather than put it in as far as I can gather.'

Arsenal are so focused on sustainability their budgets are based on attendances of 50,000 - around 10,000 fewer than the regular gates - and on forecasts of only qualifying for the Champions League every four years. They owe it to Wenger that it has not come to that yet.

And if he wants funds to strengthen the team in January, Hill-Wood promises they are available.